The ring­git has weak­ened by around 5 per­cent since the sur­prise pres­i­den­tial elec­tion vic­tory by US bil­lion­aire Don­ald Trump.

Mr Trump’s prom­ises to ramp up spend­ing on in­fra­struc­ture and cut taxes has led to warn­ings of a surge in in­fla­tion.

That could force the pol­icy set­ting US Fed­eral Re­serve to hike in­ter­est rates to cap prices, which has led to a rush back into the dol­lar.

But Mr Ad­nan poured wa­ter on the pos­si­bil­ity that Malaysia could im­ple­ment cap­i­tal con­trols to shield the ring­git, call­ing spec­u­la­tion over such mea­sures “base­less” and say­ing they would ul­ti­mately be dam­ag­ing.

Spec­u­la­tion of such con­trols rose af­ter the bank is­sued a state­ment ear­lier this week that was widely in­ter­preted as seek­ing to curb trad­ing of ring­git fu­tures.

The ring­git had al­ready been among Asia’s worst-per­form­ing cur­ren­cies over the past two years amid the oil price slump and po­lit­i­cal fric­tions stem­ming from a cor­rup­tion scan­dal linked to Prime Min­is­ter Na­jib Razak.

It has been widely spec­u­lated that the cen­tral bank has reg­u­larly in­ter­vened on be­half of the ring­git over that span, erod­ing its in­ter­na­tional re­serves. –